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"Once abolish God and the government becomes the God." -G.K. Chesterton

Monday, December 6, 2010

Democrats, Christianity, and Class Warfare

There’s nothing more pathetic really than a Democrat who wraps themselves in the veil of compassion in order to justify class warfare. There’s no moral high ground in this position. For those who believe they are somehow more caring because they desire to “soak the rich”, I have news for you. Taking isn’t the same as giving. It requires no moral courage to propose confiscating a greater share of someone else’s private and personal property. You are stealing, plain and simple. Such behavior isn’t to be celebrated, but condemned.

No man’s house ever got built by tearing another man’s house down. No nation ever prospered by allowing envy, greed, and thuggery to run rampant. The wealth created and produced by individuals doesn’t belong to the state. For the state to lay claim to a greater and greater percentage, to require the individual to labor more and more every year to justify the expansion of government, this is a form of slavery and it robs a man of his dignity. Yet we have allowed this indentured servitude to gain acceptance and dictate how our economy operates.

The result is class warfare and it’s destroying our country. We have reached a point where half the population can vote to steal a greater share of the wealth from the more productive members of society. Once this Pandora’s Box has been busted open, what’s to stop one half from robbing the other completely blind?

Let’s examine a moral dilemma. If you are struggling to make ends meet and your neighbor down the street is a millionaire living in a 10,000 square foot mansion, is it morally acceptable to break in and steal from them? Do we not have laws against this? If it’s not morally acceptable for you to steal, what makes it desirable for the government to step in and do the same thing?

Welcome to the slippery slope of government sanctioned greed. By always proposing tax hikes on “just the wealthy,” our government, and in particular progressives, are legitimizing theft. They are encouraging neighbors to covet each others possessions. The mantra of the spiritually enlightened is “do unto others as you would have done to yourself.” The manta of the Democrat, especially in Washington, is “Take from the other guy!”

For western society, the Bible is quite clear about all of this. Thou shalt not steal. That applies to corporations and governments as much as individuals. While Christianity advocates for the poor and Jesus preached against the evils of greed and the importance of charity, nowhere in the Bible does it suggest the way to help the poor is by stealing from the rich. To advocate as much, Jesus would have had to break the Ten Commandments.

The truth is the way to create an economy of abundance that best benefits the least fortunate members of society is to encourage acts of virtue, not discourage affluence. Generosity begets generosity. An economy of abundance is abundant for everyone, but it can’t be forced. Giving has to come from the heart. That’s the true change in humanity that Christ wants us to live by.

Of course, by weakening the property rights of the select few, we’ve actually condoned weakening the property rights of every citizen. The only thing that changes is the threshold to decide where that confiscation begins, who has “too much” according to the all-powerful state.

It was Karl Marx who advocated a progressive income tax scheme. Karl Marx, of course, was an atheist who called religion “the opiate of the masses” and condoned armed revolution to achieve his aim of a Worker’s Utopia. The purpose of a progressive income tax was, according to Marx, not to create a more virtuous or fair society, but to literally divide society by class until the working class was able to seize total control of production from the bourgeoisie. In other words, the purpose of class warfare was the annihilation of the propertied class! Sound familiar?

We have, in essence, unleashed two value systems against one another in America – a progressive tax code based in Marxism vs. the Judeo-Christian ethic this nation was founded on. They are not compatible. One encourages stealing, and the other encourages sharing. One abandons the idea of private property, the other celebrates it. One divides by class, the other says love your neighbor regardless of class or creed.

Rather than emphasize charity, class warfare, as brought about by a progressive income tax, really encourages hoarding and greed. The more you threaten to take from someone, the more likely they are to hold on to it tighter and find ways to hide it from being confiscated. There’s a reason, after all, so much wealth earned right here under our capitalist system is sitting in secret bank accounts overseas. Imagine if we could inject all that capital back into our economy by simply eliminating the progressive income tax code.

Anyone can be generous with other people’s money, and it’s even easier to be generous with other people’s money when it’s in your own self-interest. If I use a stolen credit card to buy dinner at a restaurant for 100 people, that doesn’t make me a particularly noble person. If I own the restaurant, that makes me the very definition of a Washington scoundrel. If I demand recognition for this "charity" and chastise others who don't support such a scheme, I can only be Chuck Schumer – or any Democrat for that matter.

I would go so far as to argue that government is the most dangerous of all thieves. At least a family in need who gives into temptation sees who they’re stealing from and takes only what is necessary. They might even spend the money locally, propping up small businesses. The government or state, by contrast, redistributes wealth only among the political elites and favored special interests. They have absolute power, which corrupts absolutely, and are therefore guaranteed to spend the confiscated sum in the most corrupt manner possible. Fraud and waste go hand and hand.

Theft practiced on the government’s grand scale is treated like a victimless crime, but we are all victims. It's just no one has to look into the eyes of the families they are stealing from. They don’t ever see the consequences of taking wealth out of communities or tying the hands of small businesses, causing local opportunities to shrink at the expense of propping up Washington. They aren’t accountable for the money that gets wasted, and they never have to spend time with the poor who fail to see their lives improve from such a corrupt system. They simply pat themselves on the back for having the very best intentions of stealing the money in the first place. The bureaucratic machine keeps the trains rolling to the slaughterhouse without ever having to see the horrors of the slaughter.

It is a convenient system for madmen and thieves. Less convenient for its citizens, even the citizen who believes somehow, some way, somewhere down the road, no matter how many years it takes, they are going to see a benefit from this sanctioned immorality. That day never comes.